AI & the Golden Thread Part 1: people getting angry

Grenfell

On 14 June 2017, I went to bed as usual; and as usual, I must have woken up at some point during the night. As usual, my phone was close at hand, and as usual, I must have glanced at the news. A fire had broken out at Grenfell Tower, a public housing block in west London - one of many high-rise residential buildings near where I worked.

Poor bastards, I thought, as I drifted back to sleep. I just assumed, as usual, that (most) people would get out safely, that the emergency services would do a heroic job, and that the fire would be successfully contained without much actual harm being done.

The next morning I went to work as usual on the company shuttle bus; as we were driven over the A40 flyover (the Westway) all eyes turned to the left when the smoke-blackened tower block came into view. We all knew by then what had just happened; no one spoke.

Outside, the smell of smoke hung around in a strange kind of early morning midsummer haze. At work, a few colleagues had gathered, looking up towards where the top of the block of flats, still smouldering, could just be seen. Someone took photographs on her phone. It wasn't for me. I turned away and tried to focus on matters at hand.

Nothing seemed as usual anymore.

"People getting angry..."

A week later I met a friend for a drink after work near Ladbroke Grove, in the shadow of the Westway and Grenfell Tower. The evening weather was warm, hot even. Public feeling was running high. Speculation was mounting as to the true number of people dead or missing. Handmade posters hung on lampposts and in the windows of the shops and homes: remembering the ones who'd died and appealing for information on those still missing; fingers of suspicion pointing at those already deemed responsible. A pop star who asserted local roots had gone public with toxic allegations of government conspiracy and a media cover-up.

People hung around in small groups, talking quietly, just one single topic of conversation. I saw a big man behind the wheel of a shiny large car, nudging it past the market stalls, somehow squeezing it through the crowded streets. I wondered if right now was the right time to be showing off just how much he had in life, in front of people who already felt they had lost so much. The smoke from the fire had cleared but the smell of something burning was still strong; grief and frustration smouldered all around. As I walked to meet my friend I had a musical earworm on repeat, over and over, one lyric in particular; a memory from another troubled time:

In memoriam 

Seventy-three people died at Grenfell. Killed by failures in the public housing system that was meant to provide them with shelter and safety in their own homes. Many people died, and hundreds more lost their homes, simply because the emergency services had no way of knowing and then responding to the complex set of risks confronting them.

The official inquiry into what happened and why is not due to report until 2024, seven years after the event. However, it is already clear that Grenfell Tower was in an inherently dangerous condition, made vastly worse because of the complete lack of a culture of responsibility for the health and safety of those residents. What we do know is that way in which the building was constructed, owned and managed, resulted in an existential threat to human life.

In recognition that the events at Grenfell required an urgent response, the government commissioned Dame Judith Hackett to lead an immediate independent review of building regulations and fire safety.

Her recommendations were published in 2018. They have led to the implementation of a new health and safety regime for high-rise buildings (eight stories and above), new as well as old, across the UK. This has now been enacted in law as the Building Safety Act 2022.

Hackett's findings exposed an almost complete lack of regard for the well-being of the residents of Grenfell and a widespread lack of safety for high-rise buildings across the UK in general. Subsequent scandals on the use of cladding and the dangerous prevalence of reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete in many public and private buildings have only reinforced the importance of her recommendations.

Crucial to the changes introduced is Hackett's recommendation that the underlying principle for this new regime is the same principle of accountability for risk which already forms the basis of most UK health and safety legislation, namely that: 

"Responsibility for risk is owned and managed by those who create it.'

This principle of responsibility for risk has been the cornerstone of public health and safety regulation since the first UK Health & Safety Act of 1975.

According to Hackett, the effectiveness of this principle when it comes to maintaining the safety of the British public is "clear and demonstrable".

From uncertainty to managed risk, Hackett recommended that we learn to understand a high-rise building as being a complex system consisting of many component parts, and where:

"the actions of many different people can compromise the integrity of that system."

This interaction between multiple component parts and the actions of multiple players can inevitably give rise to uncertainty and confusion as to who is responsible for what, and when.

Hackett found that it was the lack of an accurate and accessible "single source of truth" regarding health and fire safety risks which resulted in the existential threat to human life at Grenfell. Her report recommends a clear model of risk ownership, known as the Golden Thread, which turns these uncertainties into risks which can then be understood, assessed, and managed.

A follow-up report by the Building Regulations Advisory Committee further defined the Golden Thread as being both:

• the information about a building that allows someone to understand a building and keep it safe,

and

• the information management to ensure the information is accurate, easily understandable, can be accessed by those who need it and is up to date.

The Golden Thread, in the form of a digital record, is simply a way of establishing trust and accountability for this complex housing system throughout the entire lifecycle of the structure. It does this by connecting the responsibility for risk to whoever is responsible for creating that risk; be it the building owner, the architect, the construction company, the building product suppliers, the ongoing maintenance and management teams, and so on.

When a high-rise building complies with the Golden Thread, it means that anyone with an interest in the safety and trustworthiness of the structure will have ready access to all the relevant information, as and when needed:

• a resident concerned about the safety of their home;
• a repair crew needing to know the correct way to replace a fitting;
• firefighters needing to know the best way to respond to an emergency situation.

Software suppliers are already providing digital tools to architects, surveyors, construction engineers and building managers to help them manage their respective risks accordingly. Measures are being further developed to ensure ordinary citizens (e.g. building residents) have ready access to the same information, as appropriate. 

The ten principles themselves may seem a little obvious, perhaps even rather generic. But now that they do have the force of law, there is plenty here of interest from a data ethics point of view, particularly when it comes to assessing the likelihood of unintended negative consequences leading to possible actual harm to real people:

· How this information is to be collected, stored, and managed in a timely way?

· Who is responsible for ensuring the new requirements are upheld?

· Who does get to have access to this data, and who decides? 

But that's not what this blog is (meant to be) about.

If this approach can help ensure public safety in respect of the risks that come with living in a high-rise building, what else might it be useful for?

AI & The Golden Thread Part 2: Here come the machines